RS

FRONT PAGE CONTRIBUTOR

The startlingly unconscious bigotry of NYT’s Steve Almond.

The following is a list of the insults, negative potrayals, and generally offensive rhetoric found in this NYT article by liberal Steve Almond calling for… more civility from liberals.

Sean Hannity represented the bane of American civic life: a blow-dried blowhard paid to vilify his enemies and incite his imbecilic fans… his bullying…an escalating right-wing fanaticism…conservative folly…all the mean, manipulative things those people say…He’s just a businessman who is paid to reduce complex cultural issues to ad hominem assaults…liberals, both on an institutional and a personal level, have chosen to treat for-profit propaganda as news…the most vile and nihilistic voices on the right…The demagogues of the world, after all, derive power solely from their ability to provoke reaction…the fulminations of Fox News and the rest of the right-wing hysterics…conservative scoundrels…some part of me truly enjoys resenting conservatives…the same helplessness and rage that animates the extreme right wing of this country…blame those figures who, in my view, embody the decadent ignorance of the age…conservative demagogues…The Tea Party — inflamed and partly financed by well-funded lobbying groups…moral atrocities of the Bush era…right-wing misanthropy…I’ve come to regard all conservatives as extremists, a mob of useful idiots plied by profiteers…sadists…the very real pathologies of the modern conservative movement. The rich and powerful have clearly found in the Republican Party a willing collaborator. They’ve spent billions peddling Americans a failed theology of deregulation and lower taxes that is designed to foster and protect obscene wealth, not to serve the vast majority of our citizens. Thanks to the Supreme Court, the coming election will mark an unprecedented infusion of corporate propaganda into the political bloodstream…the childish arguments of paid provocateurs…demagogues…manipulate their legions into endorsing cruel and self-defeating policies…echo chamber of extremism…catering to a few million angry commuters…Fox News would be a popular fringe network, not the reliable conduit by which paranoid hogwash infects our mainstream media…conservative wack jobs…the cynicism of the Republican Party…what those special interests want: a nation too distracted by wrath to follow the money…conservative wing nuts…

But was the most offensive sentence at all? “We have to seek out those on the right willing to engage in genuine dialogue and ignore the rest.”

Why in God’s name would I want to talk to you, Steve Almond? You are a bad person.